The humanity of Brutus is the same on both occasions.
--It is no matter;
Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber.
Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies,
Which busy care draws in the brains of men.
Therefore thou sleep'st so sound.
OTHELLO
It has been said that tragedy purifies the affections by terror and
pity. That is, it substitutes imaginary sympathy for mere
selfishness. It gives us a high and permanent interest, beyond
ourselves, in humanity as such. It raises the great, the remote, and
the possible to an equality with the real, the little and the near.
It makes man a partaker with his kind. It subdues and softens the
stubbornness of his will. It teaches him that there are and have
been others like himself, by showing him as in a glass what they
have felt, thought, and done. It opens the chambers of the human
heart. It leaves nothing indifferent to us that can affect our
common nature. It excites our sensibility by exhibiting the passions
wound up to the utmost pitch by the power of imagination or the
temptation of circumstances; and corrects their fatal excesses in
ourselves by pointing to the greater extent of sufferings and of
crimes to which they have led others. Tragedy creates a balance of
the affections. It makes us thoughtful spectators in the lists of
life. It is the refiner of the species; a discipline of humanity.
Pages:
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82